peter l. roudik-culture and customs of the caucasus (culture and customs of europe)-greenwood (2008)

Culture and Customsof the Caucasus

Map of the Caucasus. Cartography by Bookcomp, Inc.

Culture and Customsof the Caucasus

PETER L. ROUDIK

Culture and Customs of Europe

GREENWOOD PRESSWestport, Connecticut London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Roudik, Peter L.Culture and customs of the Caucasus / Peter L. Roudik.p. cm.(Culture and customs of Europe)

Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 9780313348853 (alk. paper)1. Caucasus-Social life and customs. 2. Caucasus-Civilization. I. Title. II. Series.DK509.R68 2009947.5dc22 2008033459

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.

Copyright C 2009 by Peter L. Roudik

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may bereproduced, by any process or technique, without theexpress written consent of the publisher.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2008033459ISBN: 9780313348853

First published in 2009

Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.www.greenwood.com

Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book complies with thePermanent Paper Standard issued by the NationalInformation Standards Organization (Z39.481984).

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Series Foreword vii

Preface ix

Chronology xiii

1 Land, People, and History 1

2 Urban and Rural Developments 45

3 Family, Marriage, and Education 63

4 Thought and Religion 85

5 Languages, Folklore, and Literature 105

6 Food, Drinks, and Fashion 127

7 Cinema and Performing Arts 143

8 Visual Arts and Crafts 157

9 Sport, Leisure, and Festivals 171

vi CONTENTS

Glossary 189

Bibliography 193

Index 199

Series Foreword

The old world and the New World have maintained a uid exchange ofpeople, ideas, innovations, and styles. Even though the United States becamethe de facto world leader and economic superpower in the wake of a devastatedEurope in World War II, Europe has remained for many the standard bearerof Western culture.Millions of Americans can trace their ancestors to Europe. The United

States as we know it was built on waves of European immigration, startingwith the English who braved the seas to found the JamestownColony in 1607.Bosnian and Albanian immigrants are some of the latest new Americans.In the Gilded Age of one of our great expatriates, the novelist Henry James,

the Grand Tour of Europe was de rigueur for young American men of means,to prepare them for a life of renement and taste. In a more recent democraticage, scores of American college students have Eurailed their way across GreatBritain and the Continent, sampling the fabled capitals and bergs in a mad,great adventure, or have beneted from a semester abroad. For other Americanvacationers and culture vultures, Europe is the prime destination.What is the New Europe postCold War, postBerlin Wall in a new mil-

lennium? Even with the dierent languages, rhythms, and rituals, Euro-peans have much in common: they are largely well educated, prosperous,and worldly. They also have similar goals and face common threats and formalliances. With the advent of the European Union, the open borders, andthe Euro and considering globalization and the prospect of a homogenizedEurope, an updated survey of the region is warranted.

viii SERIES FOREWORD

Culture and Customs of Europe features individual volumes on the coun-tries most studied and for which fresh information is in demand from stu-dents and other readers. The Series casts a wide net, inclusive of not only theexpected countries, such as Spain, France, England, and Germany, but alsocountries such as Poland and Greece that lie outside Western Europe proper.Each volume is written by a country specialist, with intimate knowledge of thecontemporary dynamics of a people and culture. Sustained narrative chapterscover the land, people, and brief history; religion; social customs; gender roles,family, and marriage; literature and media; performing arts and cinema; andart and architecture.The national character and ongoing popular traditions ofeach country are framed in an historical context and celebrated along with thelatest trends and major cultural gures. A country map, chronology, glossary,and evocative photos enhance the text.The historied and enlightened Europeans will continue to fascinate Ameri-

cans. Our futures are strongly linked politically, economically, and culturally.

Preface

Everybody knows about Noahs ark, the Golden Fleece, the Nobel Prize,and Joseph Stalin, but not many realize what all of them have in common.Noahs ark nished its oating at the summit of Mount Ararat, Armenias na-tional symbol; the legend of the Golden Fleece brought the Greek Argonautsto Colchis, an ancient state on the easternmost shore of the Black Sea; AlfredNobel made his money extracting oil in Azerbaijan; and Comrade Stalin wasborn and spent his formative years in Georgia, then a southern province of theRussian empire. Today, all these places are covered by one word, Transcauca-sus, which has been the subject of numerous scholarly discussions and manycontroversial attempts to dene it. For the purpose of this book, by the wordsTranscaucasus, Transcaucasia, or South Caucasus, I mean the three newly in-dependent former Soviet republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, tiedtogether by geographic proximity, as well as political, cultural, and economicconnections. However, these factors in no way are commonalities, and theyhave often led to almost irreconcilable dierences.A region slightly larger thanNew England, Transcaucasus is a uniquemodel

of economic and political reforms, religious tolerance, and active civil society.The countries are democratic and secular, but religion is an important fac-tor in all three states, and should be taken into account by all political andsocial forces. Although geographically the region is the easternmost outpostof Europe, for many the question of where Transcaucasus really belongs isstill unanswered, though the regions future substantially depends on the an-swer. Most of the people in the Transcaucasus see themselves as closer to the

x PREFACE

Western world in culture, lifestyle, political aspirations, and values, althoughhistorically they have much in common with their immediate neighbors inthe Middle East. Relatively peaceful coexistence (in many ongoing conictsin the region, religion is not the major factor) of three world faithsJudaism,Christianity, and Islamand their constant and sometimes close interactiontransform this territory into a unique zone where dierent cultural traditionsare preserved and continue to develop.Hidden high in the mountains between two seas, the region was always of

interest to the great powers. Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Turkish sul-tans, Persian shahs, and British and Russian crowns were among those whoattempted to establish control over the territory. Today, the region remainsthe focus of world attention because of its proximity to the area of major an-titerrorist operations and vital American interests. An active Armenian dias-pora, eorts of the world community to resolve the territorial dispute betweenArmenia and Azerbaijan, business interests of major oil companies in Azer-baijan, and the political activity of the Georgians contribute to the interest ofthe world media in the region.Hundreds of volumes have been written on the history of these states and

their contemporary developments. Some aspects of their social and culturallives were analyzed in books published in the Soviet Union. However, thispart of the world, squeezed between Russia, Iran, and Turkey, remains largelyunknown to the general public, especially the cultural traditions, scholarlyachievements, and developments in art. As its title suggests, this book does notfocus on governmental institutions, the political situation, economic trends,or security policies. Rather, it focuses on customs and the modern culture ofreemerged independent states, as well as their attempts to respond to todaysinternational challenges through national theater, music, literature, and art.The book reviews the historical roots of the regions national cultures and, tounderstand the history, destiny, and identity of the people, analyzes twomajorphilosophers of the twentieth century: the Georgian Merab Mamardashviliand the Armenian Vladik Nersesiants.My goal is to present the evolving, dynamic, and diverse cultures and cus-

toms of the people of the Caucasus republics and to show their small butimportant presence in the world. In my research I relied on existing Ameri-can and foreign publications, which are listed in the bibliography and can beof help to those who want to learn more about the scholarly foundations ofTranscaucasian cultures, and on conversations with my friends and colleaguesin the United States and in the Transcaucasus region. My eld trips to thesecountries at times of peace and war were the best sources of information.Better than any study, my personal impressions inuenced the conclusions

PREFACE xi

reected in this book; all opinions expressed in this book are solely mine anddo not represent the position of my employer.Library of Congress rules of transliteration were used in this book for for-

eign words and personal names because there is no universally accepted systemfor romanizing the various languages. All personal names appear with the rstname followed by the last name. Because of inconsistencies in citing Azerbai-jani personal names in Russian and indigenous forms, the most commonlyused name is given in the book. Dates of birth and death are provided for allmajor gures. The date system used is b.c. and a.d., though the a.d. notica-tion is used only when the identication of a date can be confusing.TheRusso-Georgian war of August 2008 and recognition of SouthOssetian

and Abkhazian state independence by Russia changed the political landscapeof the entire region signicantly. These events and their consequences are notdiscussed in this book; all information is accurate through July 2008.I would like to thank the many people who have helped me in the prepa-

ration of this book, but rst of all my colleagues at the Library of Congresswho took time to discuss the book with me and provided me with invaluableadvice. I am especially thankful to friends and scholars Leila Alieva, AnushikMazmanyan, and Natela Mosesova for their consultations, tips on sources,and personal photographs they kindly oered as illustrations for this book;and to the Budagashvili family for their suggestions on how to make this bookbetter. Also, I appreciate the assistance provided by the sta of the Georgianembassy in the United States, especially that of Natia Zambakhidze.I would like to extend my special gratitude to Robert Roudik for his edi-

torial assistance, Greenwood Press editor Kaitlin Ciarmiello for her supportand encouragement throughout the writing of this book, and Aptara, Inc. fortheir assistance and cooperation.As always, this work is dedicated to my wife, Svetlana.

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Chronology

PERIOD OF ANTIQUITY

200,000 B.C. First humans settle in the Caucasus Mountains.

ca. 700 B.C. The Medes settle areas of present-day Azerbaijan.

ca. 500 B.C. Georgian tribes organize in unions; Greek and Persian settlersarrive in the area.

300201 B.C. Alexander the Great conquers Transcaucasus.

190 B.C. Prince Artaxisas creates the kingdom of Armenia.

9555 B.C. The kingdom of Armenia reaches greatest size and inuenceunder Tigranes II the Great.

66 B.C. Romans conquer the western Caucasus Mountains and theGeorgian kingdom of Kartli-Iberia.

30 B.C. Romans conquer kingdom of Armenia.

A.D. 100300 Romans occupy Azerbaijan and name it Albania.

A.D. 301 Tiridates III declares Christianity the ocial religion ofArmenia.

A.D. 330 Georgia accepts Christianity as the state religion.

xiv CHRONOLOGY

MEDIEVAL TIMES

640ca. 1000 Arabs occupy Azerbaijan.

645 Arabs capture Tbilisi.

653 Byzantine Empire cedes Armenia to the Arabs.

813 Armenian Prince Ashot I begins his 1,000-year rule ofGeorgia with the Bagratid dynasty.

1008 Bagrat III unites the western and eastern parts of Georgiaknown as Kartli and Colchis.

10991125 David IV the Builder establishes the Georgian empire.

1100s1300s Armenian and Georgian armies join European armies in theCrusades.

1223ca. 1400 The Mongols invade the region.

1501 Azerbaijan introduces Shia Islam as the state religion.

1553 Georgia is divided between the Ottoman Turks and thePersian Empire.

16151616 The Persian Shah Abbas kills 60,000 Georgians and deports100,000.

RUSSIAN COLONIZATION

ca. 1700 Russia starts its conquest of Caucasus.

1747 The Azerbaijani kingdom fragments into khanates.

1762 Eastern Georgian regions unite in the kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti.

1795 Persian forces take Tbilisi and the Georgian King Erekle IIturns to Russia for protection.

1801 The Russian Empire dethrones the Bagratid dynasty and an-nexes Georgia.

1811 The Georgian church loses its autocephalous status due toRussication.

1813 Treaty of Gulistan divides Azerbaijan into Russian (northern)and Persian (southern) spheres.

1828 Treaty of Turkmanchay awards Nakhichevan and area aroundYerevan to Russia.

18291878 Russia expands its possessions in Transcaucasus.

CHRONOLOGY xv

1846 Private land ownership is legalized in Caucasus.

1859 First oil renery in the world is built in Baku.

1865 First technical high school and rst high school for womenopen in Baku.

1872 Oil industry in Azerbaijan is privatized.

1875 Foreign capital is introduced in Caucasus.

1887 Industrial production of Armenian brandy starts.

1895 Ottoman Turks massacre 300,000 Armenian subjects.

ca. 1900 Radical revolutionary organizations begin to form in SouthCaucasus.

1902 Railroad connects South Caucasus and Europe.

1915 Turks massacre between 600,000 and 2 million Armenians.

PERIOD OF FIRST REPUBLICS

1917 Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia form the independentTranscaucasus Federation.

1918 Independent Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia emerge fromdefeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I.

1920

MayJuly The Caucasus economies are nationalized.

19201921 Russian Red Army invades Transcaucasus.

SOVIET RULE

1922 Three republics form the Transcaucasus Soviet Federative So-cialist Republic as autonomies and are admitted to the SovietUnion.

1936 The Transcaucasus Federation dissolves, and each republicbecomes a full-edged member of the Soviet Union.

19411945 The Soviet Union engages in World War II.

1943 Autonomy is restored to the Georgian Orthodox Church.

1945 Azerbaijani Academy of Sciences is established.

1946 Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory is established inArmenia.

xvi CHRONOLOGY

1950s1960s Azerbaijan loses its status of a main Soviet oil producer fol-lowing discovery of oil in Siberia.

1969 Heydar Aliyev is named head of Azerbaijan.

1970 Zviad Gamsakhurdia begins organizing dissident Georgiannationalists.

1988 Georgian Parliament announces a program to recuperate theGeorgian language.

1988 Merab Mamardashvilis collected works are rst published.

January A mob in Azerbaijan kills about 100 Armenians in the cityof Sumgait.

February NagornoKarabakh government votes to unify the Azerbai-jani region with Armenia.

December Disastrous earthquake in northern Armenia kills 35,000,leaves 400,000 homeless, and totally destroys city of Gyumri.

1989 The Armenian Pan-National Movement is legalized.

March 19 Abkhazia declares its intentions to separate from the Republicof Georgia.

April 9 Soviet troops violently break up peaceful demonstration andkill civilian demonstrators in Tbilisi.

September Azerbaijan starts a blockade against Armenia.

December 1 Armenia annexes Mountainous Karabakh.

1990

March 9 Georgia declares sovereignty.

September 20 South Ossetian legislature declares the regions separationfrom Georgia.

1991 Caucasus republics declare their independence from the So-viet Union.

January Soviet troops are sent to Azerbaijan to halt anti-Armenianpogroms and disperse public demonstrations.

May 26 Zviad Gamsakhurdia is elected president of Georgia.

September 23 Armenia declares independence.

POSTSOVIET INDEPENDENCE

1992 Azerbaijan and Armenia join the Commonwealth of Inde-pendent States, a loose union of the former Soviet states.

CHRONOLOGY xvii

March Eduard Shevardnadze returns to power in Georgia.

19921993 Fighting breaks out between Georgian and Abkhazian inde-pendence forces, with large-scale refugee displacement.

1993 The International Olympic Committee recognizes the na-tional Olympic committees of the Caucasus republics.

May The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europenegotiates a cease-re in the NagornoKarabakh conict.

September Georgians are expelled from Abkhazia.

October Following the rebellion against President Abulfaz Elchibey ofAzerbaijan, Heydar Aliyev is reinstated as president.

1994 Abkhazia proclaims its independence, and a Russian peace-keeping force of 2,500 moves in.

May 1 Georgia becomes a member state of the Commonwealth ofIndependent States.

May 16 Armenia and Azerbaijan sign an armistice treaty.

September 20 Azerbaijan and leading global oil companies sign the Con-tract of the Century oil exploration contract.

1995 European Union and Caucasus republics sign partnershipagreements.

Russia opens a military base in Armenia.

1996

April 22 Georgia establishes partnership and cooperation treaty withthe European Union.

19972002 The region experiences a series of presidential elections,passages of new constitutions, and fruitless peace negotia-tions.

1999

April 27 Georgia admitted to the Council of Europe.

October 27 A shoot-out in Armenias Parliament kills the prime minister,speaker of Parliament, and six other legislators.

2000 U.S. military advisers are sent to the Caucasus to train localarmed forces.

2002 Russia extends its citizenship to people of Abkhazia andSouth Ossetia.

xviii CHRONOLOGY

2003 The so-called rose revolution inGeorgia results in the resigna-tion of the incumbent President Shevardnadze and his partybecause of awed elections.

2004 Mikheil Saakashvili is elected president of Georgia and beginsradical reforms.

2005 Azerbaijans President Aliyev orders celebrations of major lit-erary events, republication of Azerbaijani classics in the Latinalphabet, and publication of the National Encyclopedia.

2006 Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia join the European HigherEducation Area and participate in the Bologna process.

2008 Presidential and parliamentary elections in all three republicsare recognized as free and fair, conrming the continuity ofdemocratic reforms.

1Land, People, and History

The three geographically isolated republics of CaucasusArmenia, Azer-baijan, and Georgiareappeared on the world map in 1991, after they pro-claimed independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union, of whichthey had been a part since the early 1920s.1 However, for long periods oftime these ancient states existed as separate nations, or as parts of neighbor-ing empires. In the time of conicts and international calamities, these rela-tively obscure nations used to attract international attention. The twenty-rstcenturys challenges, civil wars in Azerbaijan and Georgia, and long-lastingethnic conicts, especially those in Abkhazia and Karabakh, again have madethe region an area where the international community tries to promote peace,resolve conicts, and experiment with all kinds of reforms in an attempt toprevent the rise of Islamic radicalism.

THE LAND

TheCaucasusMountains are a thousand-mile-long and two-hundred-mile-wide mountainous system that geographically divides Europe and Asia, andpolitically serves as the boundary between Russia and the Middle East. WithMount Elbrus (elevation 18,506 feet) the Caucasus is the tallest mountainrange in Europe. On a map, the Caucasus looks like a small strip betweenthe Black and Caspian seas, but the variety of natural conditions is abundant.A distance of fty miles or even less distinguishes lowlands or plains fromtall, rocky mountains; humid subtropical climate from dry continental zones;

2 CULTURE AND CUSTOMS OF THE CAUCASUS

and grape- and orange-producing areas from glaciers covered with permanentsnow. Each area of the Caucasus has its own unique characteristics.

Geographic Terrain

Three physical features dominate the region: the Black Sea that forms anatural boundary to the west, the Greater and the Lesser Caucasus mountainranges in the middle, and the Caspian Sea with some extensive atlands tothe east. The snow line is located at the elevation of about 7,00010,000 feet,and about 2 percent of the entire territory, mostly in the north, is coveredwith 1,400 glaciers. In the southern part, permanent snow and glaciers arevisible much less; only on the highest peaks such as Mount Aragats (elevation13,309 feet). The mountains are crossed with crests and overpasses distancedabout ve to ten miles from one another, which creates a complex network oftrails, used since ancient times for keeping economic and cultural ties amongthe people who populated the area. Although the mountains make travel inall directions dicult, these peaks have never been insurmountable thanks tothe overpasses, and peoples of dierent ethnicities have moved through thearea continuously.The modern topography was formed about 25 million years ago when a

geological upheaval pushed the earths crust upward to form plateaus in theCaucasus range. Geological turmoil continues in the form of devastatingearthquakes; seismic activity is probably the most common geographic featureof the area. More than 3,000 earthquakes were registered in the area duringthe twentieth century.2 In December 1988, Gyumri, the second-largest cityof Armenia, was heavily damaged by an earthquake. When the rst humanssettled in the area about 200,000 years ago, the land looked much dierentfrom today. No fewer than ten volcanoes were active in the mountains, andherds of white elephants roamed the area, coexisting with mountain lions,bears, and many now-extinct birds.Although the mountains are largely characteristic of the region,3 numerous

lowlands and valleys form the landscape in the south and along both seashores.Major Caucasian rivers are the Terek, Kura (in Azerbaijan named Mtkvari),and its tributary, the Aras, which is fed by eight other rivers. The Kura is thelongest river in the Caucasus; its delta ows into the Caspian Sea. The wa-ter from these rivers provides hydroelectric power and irrigation. Inguri andRioni are the largest rivers that drain into the Black Sea. Most rivers in theCaucasus are not navigable, as they are shallow, change riverbed congura-tions often, and have fast water ows. Navigation is conducted primarily onthe 60miles of the Rioni River and 360miles of the 909-mile-long Kura River.Dams built on the Kura and Aras rivers collect waters for reservoirs that feedhydropower plants and irrigational systems. There are more than 2,000 lakes

LAND, PEOPLE, AND HISTORY 3

in the Caucasus, but most are not big. Lake Sevan, the largest lake in the re-gion, is about 55 miles at its widest point, about 250 miles long, and measures330 feet deep. It lies about 6,250 feet above sea level, while the surroundingmountains rise 11,800 feet high. It is uncertain whether Lake Sevan will keepits status as the main supplier of drinking water in the region in the future,as its water level is constantly falling because the lake is used as a source forhydropower.

Climate

The climate, aected by European and Mediterranean factors, varies fromsubtropical and dry in the mountains to subtropical and humid along theseashores. It is cold in higher mountain elevations and temperate on bothseacoasts. Elevation determines temperatures and precipitation in the moun-tains. High mountains do not allow cold winds from the north to reach thearea and guarantee a nice warm climate all year round. The weather is colderand wetter higher up in the mountains. Along the seashores, annual precipi-tation is about one hundred inches. Temperatures vary from the low thirties,Fahrenheit, in the winter to the nineties in the summer.The landscape also depends on the elevation.The upper zones of the moun-

tains, up to the snow line, consist of alpine meadows, which are used as pas-tures. Forests are at elevations below them; however, the energy crisis of the1990s led to deforestation when many people began to scavenge for rewood.Lower levels of the mountain slopes are covered with tea plantations, lemonand orange groves, vineyards, and, in the ravines, mineral springs with medic-inal qualities that house famous resorts. Swamps in the lowlands were arti-cially drained in the middle of the twentieth century and transformed intograin and corn plantations.

Natural Resources

The ora and fauna of the Caucasus are extremely varied, and more than6,000 types of plants, or more than twice the number found in all of EasternEurope, grow there. Tens of dierent types of animals populate themountains,among them impalas, hogs, bears, groundhogs, squirrels, otters, and martens.Rivers and lakes, and especially the seas, are full of marketable sh. Caspiansturgeon is the best-known local delicacy.Caucasian subsoil is rich with mineral resources. Since ancient times, peo-

ple have extracted copper, iron ore, silver, and lead from the mountains, andaccording to some historians, metallurgy was invented in the Caucasus. Theinvention of steel is attributed to the ancient Georgian tribe of Chalybes.Cuneiform found in the state of Urartu (territory of present-day Armenia)by archeologists report that kings of this state requested tax payments from


some Caucasian tribes in the form of copper or other metals. The myth ofJason and the Golden Fleece, which the Argonauts wanted to obtain, sup-ports information about the early development of metalworks. Golden eecewas the name of the lambskin lled with stuck golden sand. The rst-centurygeographer Strabo reported that this was the way of gathering gold in Colchis,where underground streams pushed gold up to the surface.Of great economic importance today is industrial exploration of manganese

and molybdenum. Oil is of special importance among Caucasian resourcestoo. Great oil reserves were found in Azerbaijani oil elds o the shores ofthe Caspian Sea. The amount of oil is so great that oil leaks out onto theground and many roads in Azerbaijan are patched with oil rigs where oil ispumped out. Abundant Azerbaijani oil resources and international eorts todevelop them may inuence the international economy strongly because ofthe possibility of establishing new transcontinental transportation corridorsand reducing the United States dependence on Middle Eastern supplies. TheCaucasus has abundant reserves of natural building materials too. The mainmaterial is stone, which is widely used all over the region. Clay and wood arealso used in construction, as well as in dierent crafts, such as pottery andwoodworking.Because of almost unrestricted exploitation of Caucasuss natural resources

during previous years, all three Caucasian republics experience similar envi-ronmental problems. The most signicant problem is air and water pollutioncaused mainly by oil reneries and inecient chemical and metallurgical in-dustries. The worst air quality is in Azerbaijans capital city of Baku, wherethe oil industry is concentrated. The Caspian Sea is polluted by oil leakagesand the dumping of raw or inadequately treated sewage. The city of Sumgait,located about forty miles north of the Azerbaijani capital and with 275,000inhabitants, was the center of the nations chemical industry during the So-viet era. In 2007, the United Nations recognized Sumgait as the second worstplace to live on the planet. Almost the entire city area is contaminated by heavymetals, oil waste, and other chemical substances. Almost all children in thearea are born with deformed bones, genetic diseases, and mental retardation.During the Soviet era, all three republics were pushed to use extremely

heavy applications of pesticides to increase the output of scarce subtropicalcrops for the rest of the Soviet Union. Although many of the chemicals arenot in use any more, groundwaters are still polluted, and scientists attributethe increase in birth defects and illnesses to the previous indiscriminate use offertilizers.4 Illegal shing of sturgeon in the Caspian Sea is another acute envi-ronmental problem. Russia has ocially prohibited the consumption of blackcaviar, but this step has not been followed by Azerbaijan or Iran, which havea large share of the global caviar trade.


Landscape and the Economy of the Republics

Landscape and geographic conditions aected the political formation of thethree Caucasian states.TheRepublic of Georgia is located on the eastern slopesof themountains, on the westernmost shore of the Black Sea.TheCaspian sea-coast and northern ridges of the Caucasus range form the territory of Azer-baijan. The landscape of Armenia, which lies between two other republics, isdominated by the Armenian plateau, which slopes gradually downward intothe Aras River valley (see Table 1.1).

Armenia

Armenia is a country of treeless basalt clis. Grass, which is green onlyin early spring, burns under the strong sun in the summer and fall. Stone isthe main feature of the Armenian natural and cultural landscape. For controlover each small plot of land, Armenian farmers have fought for centuries. Itis amazing that Armenian gardens are able to grow among the stones. Themost populated area of Armenia is the Ararat Valley, located along the ArasRiver, which forms the border with Turkey to the west and Iran to the south.Being irrigated, the valley is intersected with roads and water canals underthe poplars and is covered with plantations, gardens, and vineyards. In thesouth, small valleys are squeezed among the highest mountains. This part ofthe country has a subtropical climate; fruits, nuts, and grapes are the areasmain agricultural products. Most of the Armenian population lives in thewestern and northwestern parts of the country, where the two major cities arelocated. Because of the cold and dry climate, the northwestern high moun-tainous plateaus serve mostly as pastures for cattle.Today, Armenian enterprises produce copper, molybdenum, articial dia-

monds, rubber, building materials, movable electric power stations, electron-ics, textiles, and silk. In the integrated Soviet economy, the Armenian skilledand educated population was used to manufacture goods that were used bypeople all over the Soviet Union. The thirty-ve-mile-long ArpaSevan watertunnel built in the mountains is a subject of technological pride. However,heavy industrialization required that additional energy resources and nuclearpower plants be built in seismic zones, endangering the lives of local peo-ple. Still, there is no rm opinion as to whether these stations are secure andwill survive a strong earthquake. The substantial pollution of lands and wa-ters is another result of the disproportional industrial buildup in Armenia.Mount Ararat, located in Turkish territory, and soaring 16,874 feet over thesurrounding plain, is Armenias national symbol. The name Ararat is fromthe Armenian word that means life and creation. Historically located onthe territory of the Armenian Kingdom, Mount Ararat has been revered by

Table 1.1Statistical Prole of the Caucasian Republics

Capital city

Size in squaremiles (U.S.equivalent)

Population(millions)

Medianage/life

expectancy

GDP per capita(US$)/annualgrowth rate

Naturalresources Major industries

Armenia Yerevan 9,933(Maryland)

2,972 31/72.1 $5,700/10.5% Small depositsof gold, copper,and bauxite

Diamond processing,microelectronics,textiles, shoes,chemicals, trucks, tires,and brandy

Azerbaijan Baku 28,866(Maine)

8,120 28/65.9 $9,000/31% Oil, naturalgas, cotton,tobacco, andiron ore

Petroleum, oil eldequipment, metallurgy,chemicals, and textiles

Georgia Tbilisi 23,233(South

Carolina)

4,646 38/76.3 $4,200/10% Manganese,copper, andgrapes

Aircraft, electricalappliances, steel, wine,and wood products

Source: CIA World Fact Book (data for 2007), available at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/.


the Armenians as a spiritual place and the home of the gods of the Arme-nian pantheon. In the nineteenth century, the mount was divided betweenthe Russian and Ottoman Empires. The mount belonged to Armenia dur-ing the short period of independence after World War I (19181921), butthe Treaty of Kars, which dened the border between Turkey and the SovietUnion in 1921, placed Ararat on the Turkish side of the border. Since 1936,Ararat is reected on the Armenias coat of arms, which is subject of regulardiplomatic protests from Turkey.

Azerbaijan

The most rugged terrain is in the Southeast of Azerbaijan, which of thethree Caucasian states has the greatest land area. Azerbaijan is dominated bythe shoreline of the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus mountain range, and atlandsin the middle of the country. Landscape is characterized by dramatic elevationchanges over short distances, from lowlands to highlands, with nearly halfof the country considered mountainous. The word Azerbaijan is a distortionof the Greek word Atropates, given by the successors of Alexander the Greatto the region of ancient Iran and inhabited by mysterious people known asthe Albans. The word Atropates means protected by re, a reference to the

A typical Azerbaijani landscape. Courtesy of Leila Alieva.


res in the Zoroastrian temples and to the to natural burning of surface oildeposits. Although the Albans disappeared from history, each and every ethnicgroup now present in the region claims ties to their ancient heritage.Citrus fruits, tea, and rice are grown in the lowlands, while the slopes

are covered with vineyards and orchards. Besides being a major producerof grapes, Azerbaijani agriculture is known for olives, saron, pomegranates,nuts, vegetables, gs, and the sesame plant for seeds and oil. The shing in-dustry is important to the economy, with the catch consisting mostly of her-ring, carp, and sturgeon roe that is processed into caviar. Agriculture is thesecond largest industry after petroleum exploration, processing, and trans-portation, which is the backbone of the Azerbaijani economy. Because of theSoviet policy to change priorities for economic development, Azerbaijan wastraditionally far away from investments and no major development projectswere initiated there after World War II. At the end of Soviet rule, Azerbaijanhad the lowest rate of growth in productivity and economic output amongthe Soviet republics. In the Soviet Union, each republic was responsible forits contribution to a particular eld of economy. Under Soviet governmentregulations, Azerbaijan was responsible for the proper functioning of farmersmarkets all over the former Soviet Union, supplying sta and managing logis-tics. This assignment slowed down the economic development of the republicand contributed to corruption. There are two autonomous territories withinAzerbaijan: Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic is a special administrativedistrict separated from the rest of Azerbaijan by a strip of Armenian territorybordering Turkey; the Karabakh area populated mainly by Armenians was an-other constituent republic of Azerbaijan. Despite the fact that the Karabakhlegislature declared the regions independence from Azerbaijan in 1988, andthat Armenian troops later occupied the territory, Karabakh, which consti-tutes about one-fth of the Azerbaijani territory, remains formally a part ofAzerbaijan.

Georgia

According to a Georgian legend, when God was distributing land amongthe peoples of the world, the Georgians were so busy eating and drinking thatthey lost their place in the queue and there was no land left for them. Butwhen they invited God to join the party, he enjoyed himself immensely andgave them all the bits of land he had been saving for himself. Today,Georgia has the most varied topography as well as the most inclusive admin-istrative system of the three countries. Two autonomous republics, Abkhaziaand Ajaria, and South Ossetia Autonomous Province are part of the Geor-gian federation. Abkhazia and Ajaria are small territories in the northwest andsouthwest of Georgia, respectively, along the eastern shore of the Black Sea.


South Ossetia is the northernmost Georgian territory, which borders RussiasNorth Ossetia district populated by the same Ossetian people who were di-vided by state borders when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.The usage of the word Georgia is relatively misleading. The Republic of

Georgia has nothing in common with the state of Georgia in the UnitedStates, and although St. George is the countrys patron saint, the name Geor-gia comes from the Arabic and Persian words Kurj and Gurj. According toancient Greek historians, the country, which had been known as Iberia, wasrenamed by the Greeks to Georgiana, meaning promised land. Georgiansname their land Sakartvelo and themselves Kartveli. Present-day reference toSakartvelo includes both the eastern part known in Georgian as Kartli (orIberia in Greek) and the western region Egrisi in Georgian (or Colchis inGreek). These regions were separate state units until King Bagrat III unitedthem in 1008, eliminating long-standing cultural dierences.Georgians are agrarians. More than half of all types of wheat known in the

world are produced in Georgia. Wine making is one of the most importantdomestic industries. About 500 kinds of grape are grown in the country. Tea,tobacco, and corn are produced in the western part of the country. Oranges,other fruits, and grapes are common in the east. Animal husbandry, beekeep-ing, and hunting are among the traditional Georgian activities. The bottlingof mineral water is a specic Georgian industry; the Borzhomi mineral wa-ter has medicinal features and can be used for treatments. Up to 100 millionBorzhomi bottles were produced in the late 1980s, when production was atits peak. Resorts, spa areas, abundant historic places, and natural beauty makeGeorgia an attractive tourist destination. Today, the food processing and tex-tile industries account for two-thirds of the nations gross domestic product.Previously, large trucks were produced for decades in the city of Kutaisi, andlocomotives built in Tbilisi were exported to all republics of the Soviet Unionand the Eastern bloc. The national economy still did not fully recuperate af-ter the collapse of the integrated Soviet economy. Agriculture is no longer asprotable as it used to be, local enterprises are idle, many of them have beenplundered, and the power supply is erratic. Unemployment is high in all of theCaucasian republics, andmany people are living onmoney transfers from rela-tives who emigrated abroad or moved to Russia because of better-paying jobs.

THE PEOPLE

The Caucasus is one of the oldest continuously inhabited regions in hu-man history. More than forty ethnicities claim the Caucasus as their nativeland. Sizable ethnic groups related to cultures of neighboring nations havecompact settlements within each of the Caucasian republics. They are, for


instance, Greeks in Georgia, Kurds in Armenia, and Lezghians in Azerbaijan.This book, however, will focus only on major nations; other smaller nationalgroups will be discussed in less detail or simply mentioned. As mountain-ous countries, all republics of the Caucasus have been naturally divided intoseparate regions that had little communication between them. This regionalisolation has been reected in the proliferation of ancient and medieval king-doms and principalities, in the feuds between various parts of each country,and in the diculty of rulers in establishing a single national polity. It is alsoreected in the multiplicity of languages spoken by the minority groups, in-comprehensible to their fellow compatriots in other parts of the country.5All ethnic people attempt to conrm their historical supremacy in the elds

of culture (invention of ironworking), religion (early adoption of Christian-ity), and politics (early establishment of statehood). They try to defend theirterritorial rights through the deepening of their roots in a given homeland.At the same time, they associate themselves with the glorious deeds of distantreal or imagined ancestors mentioned by classical authors.6

Ethnic Features

People of the Caucasus are among the longest-living people of the world.Another of their distinctive features is the desire to communicate with oneanother and visitors. Observers agree that with a high level of intellectual abil-ity, they are quick witted and prone to volatility and mood changes. They aregifted in dancing, singing, creating poetry, and making crafts. They tend totake an optimistic view of life, are generous in terms of hospitality, and arefond of food and wine.7 According to anthropologists, people who settledin the Caucasus Mountains about 6,000 years ago had very pale skin. Be-cause of a popular nineteenth-century theory, which has now been disproved,that stated that all people with pale skin had originated in this area, the termCaucasianwas used to describe people of the white race. Despitemany culturaland linguistic dierences, all of the people of the area have relatively similarappearances. All Caucasian people look like any other southern Europeans.They are usually tall, have bright faces, long and outstanding noses, and darkeyes and hair, although red-haired people with blue eyes are not a rarity. Peopleof western Georgia belong to the so-calledMediterranean type and have softerfeatures with lighter skin color. Blue-eyed people with lighter hair are morecommon among the Georgians than in the other two countries. Azerbaijanisare darker, shorter, and look similar to their Iranian neighbors.Caucasian women have always been known for their beauty. According to

a local legend, when God decided to marry, he ordered all beautiful womento visit him at Mount Ararat. God chose one of the rst women, but while ontheir way to Mount Ararat, the rest of the beauties gathered in Georgia and


A Georgian peasant. Courtesy of Mr. and Mrs.Omari Budagashvili.

remained there. Beautiful women gave birth to handsome men, and that ishow the nation of good-looking people was established.

Historical Roots of Armenians

All three cultures experienced completely dierent external inuences.Even before Christianity, Georgian culture was inuenced by ancient Greecebecause of its location along the Black Sea. At the same time, southeasternEuropean tribes settled in the territory of Armenia, and Asiatic Medes, Per-sians, and Scythians resided on lands that today are part of Azerbaijan, wherePersian cultural inuence turned to be the most formative.The most ethnically homogeneous among the three Caucasian republics

is Armenia. Armenians make up almost 98 percent of the entire population.Because of ethnic purges and bloody confrontations, most Azerbaijanis edArmenia between 1988 and 1992. Armenians are one of the most ancientpeople on the planet. Their long, dicult, and often tragic history of creativelabor has enriched civilization with great examples of material and spiritual


culture. They attribute their descent to Noahs son Japheth. Ethnically theyare linked to those tribes that migrated from southeastern Europe to AsiaMinor late in the second millennium b.c. and to the residents of the Urartukingdom that existed in the area from the thirteenth to the sixty century b.c.According to the migration theory, proto-Armenian speakers rst arrived inthe Tigris Valley in the twelfth century b.c. and merged with local inhabitantsafterward.8 Research conducted in the 1970s identied state formations thatexisted in the middle of the second millennium b.c. and claimed that theArmenian language was transmitted by the Urartian cuneiform.Originally, Armenians resided all over the southern Caucasus mountains.

Periods of independent existence interchanged with periods of occupation,when the country was plundered and destroyed. For thousands of years,masses of people were resettled and forced to live rst in neighboring coun-tries, and then far away from their motherland and all over the globe. Per-secutions, massacres, and displacements made Armenians the most dispersedpeople in the area. Today, communities of Armenian emigrants are vibrant inmany countries around the world, especially in France and the United States.Armenia is the most homogenous country in the region. After the Karabakhwar began, almost all Azerbaijanis ed the country, and Russians attempted toemigrate back to Russia, where the economic situation appeared to be muchbetter.Until the active urbanization in the middle of the twentieth century, the

majority of the Armenian population consisted of farmers who carefully pre-served their traditional way of living, which was based on complex agricul-tural and cattle breeding, which depended on the continental climate andmountainous landscape. Field agriculture (production of wheat, barley, rye,millet) was combined with gardening (peaches, pomegranates, apples, wal-nuts) and grape and wine production. Depending on conditions, animal hus-bandry (cows, horses, pigs, donkeys, bualos) took the form of pasturing orsettled raising. Pasturing inuenced food, transportation, family relations, andhousing. Craftsmanship and the cottage industry, known for their quality andartistic value even outside of Armenia, were always of great importance to thenations economy. Carpet and lace making, jewelry making, and stone carvingwere among the most popular crafts.Today, in all spheres of Armenian life, we can see strong connections be-

tween historic heritage and dynamic development. The current-day artisansnd their inspiration in historic artifacts and national treasures. Armeniantheater, music, literature, lm, and paintings bear national colors and reectethnic visions of the artists. The richness of Armenian cultural heritage andthe heroic history of the Armenians, who regardless of being dispersed aroundthe world,9 keep ghting for the revival of their nation, attract the interestsof people in other nations. With strong support from the diaspora, centers


for the study of Armenian language, history, and culture have been created inmany European countries and in the United States.

Azerbaijans Population

Contrary to the millennium-long history of Armenian statehood, the con-solidation of the Azerbaijanis as a coherent ethnic group took place only in the1920s, although Azerbaijani scholars argue that Azerbaijani people descendedfrom the local Albans, who fell under Iranian inuence in the rst millenniumb.c. and began to assimilate with Turkic-language-speaking newcomers dur-ing the rst millennium a.d. The rst settlers of the lowlands in Azerbaijancame from the mountains. These people intermarried with Persian invadersand later mixed with Seljuk Turks who arrived in the eleventh century a.d.According to Joseph Stalins nation-state policy, which required the existenceof an Azerbaijani nation to populate the republic named Azerbaijan, the ma-jority of Azerbaijans population, formerly known as Turks, was reidentied asAzerbaijani in 1937.10 However, even today, the Azerbaijanis associate them-selves much less with the country as a whole than with a particular locality ora region from which they come.Azerbaijans population consists of a single ethnic group, and problems with

ethnic minorities have been dominated by Armenian uprisings in the moun-tainous, western region of Karabakh. The population is concentrated in a fewurban centers, as well as in the most fertile agricultural regions. The share ofAzerbaijanis in the nations population, which accounts for 91 percent of thetotal population, has dramatically increased during the past years because ofa high birth rate, expulsion of Armenians, the entry of Azerbaijani refugeesfrom Armenia, and the emigration of Russians and other minorities. About13 million Azerbaijanis reside in the northern provinces of Iran. NoticeableAzerbaijani communities live in Moscow, Georgia, and neighboring regionsof Russia.The largest minority groups in Azerbaijan are the Lezghians (about

170,000) and the Avars. The majority of these groups reside in large num-bers to the north of the Russo-Azerbaijani border in semi-independence.Theyare Sunni Muslims and speak their own language. From time to time thesegroups demand more autonomy and special rights to contact their relativesin Russia. That creates some instability in the border region and threatens thenational unity of Azerbaijan. About ninety other small ethnic groups consistof 260,000 people, among them Kurds, Talyshin, Tats, Iranians, and othersliving in the South, and culturally related to the Iranians. The role of thenon-Turkic groups that inhabited the area is considered to be minimal inAzerbaijans ethnic genesis.11As a result of numerous invasions and control by the Ottoman, Persian,

and Russian empires, people who were recognized as titular ethnicities for


these states, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, and Georgians, were often displaced.For example, the Republic of Azerbaijan contains only about 6 million of theworlds estimated 19 million ethnic Azerbaijanis, with the rest living mostlyin Iran and Russia.

Different Peoples of Georgia

The great majority of the worlds Georgian population lives in the Republicof Georgia, whose boundaries were little changed since ancient times. How-ever, Georgia is a multiethnic state. Ethnic Georgians account for 74 percentof the population, with signicant shares of Abkhazians, Azerbaijanis, Arme-nians, Russians, and many other people. Although the majority of the popu-lation consists of Georgians, there are many areas where minorities dominate.The Laz, who live in the south of Ajaria, are a specic ethnic group. Othermembers of the group reside in Turkey. Armenians can be met in southernGeorgia too, and Azerbaijanis in the eastern Georgia.The genesis of ethnicities in South Caucasus has not yet been widely stud-

ied. Supposedly, the two Georgian ethnic cultures of Colchis and Kartli wereformed between the fth and second centuries b.c. Much later, they consoli-dated into a unied Georgian nation. Despite the fact that Georgians make upa very cohesive nation, there are several local ethnic groups, which have theirown distinct traditions and dialects, although they all belong to the Georgian(Kvartveli) people. The Kartlians, in whose region the capital city of Tbil-isi is located, have a reputation for aristocratic breeding, the Kakhetians areknown for solid resoluteness, while in western Georgia, the Mingrelians aresingled out for astuteness. The Gurians are boastful and ruthless, and tena-cious. In upland Imereti, the Ratchans are known for thrift, industry, andphysical strength. The Svans who live high in the mountains have a reputa-tion for savagery. The Pshav, Khevsur, and Tush people of eastern Georgiahold to curious ancient rites and costumes, and until the mid-1950s, theywore medieval chain armor.12 These dierences were also reected in theirdaily customs. For example, hospitality is a common trait of all Georgians. Inwestern Georgia an invitation to a feast by Imeretians or Gurians is accompa-nied by lengthy invitations and refusals; however, in central Georgia Khevsurswould be oended if a guest who entered the house did not just start eatingwithout a formal invitation.Three major Georgian minorities are Abkhazians, Ajarians, and Ossetians.

During Soviet times, all three minorities were assigned a special status, and theterritories of their compact living were designated as autonomous republicswithin Georgia. Two of them, Abkhazia and Ajaria are predominantly Mus-lim. Because of the Turkish presence in Georgia, a small ethnic Georgian mi-nority group known as Ajarians was established. Before Ajaria became part of


Georgia in 1787, following the Congress of Berlin resolution, it was part ofthe Ottoman Empire and included a Georgian population converted to Islam.Despite centuries of living in predominantly Christian Georgia, the Ajariansremained Muslim.Whereas Ajarians who reside in the southwestern corner of Georgia along

the Black Sea and bordering Turkey are ethnic Georgians who, during Turk-ish occupation in the sixteenth century, accepted Islam but preserved theirGeorgian language and traditions, Abkhazians have closer ties with the peopleof the northern Caucasus of the Russian Federation. Abkhazians were morestrongly inuenced by the Christian Georgians, and until recently Islamicidentity did not play an important role in the national consciousness. Abk-hazians are a relatively small ethnic group with their own language, which isnot related to the Georgian language. The Abkhazian language is related toa group of Adyghe languages spoken by the northern Caucasian ethnicitiesresiding within the Russian Federation. It is an extremely dicult languagein which the verb takes on a great deal of lexical and syntactical duties that we,as English speakers, would not expect.13 Early residents of Abkhazia adoptedChristianity around a.d. 550, under the Byzantine emperor Justinian I. In theeighth century, the independent Kingdom of Abkhazia was formed, and in thesixteenth century, Abkhazia came under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, andIslam largely replaced Christianity. In 1810, Abkhazia became Russias protec-torate, and in 1864, Abkhazia was nally included in the Russian Empire. Inmaterial culture, Abkhazians are very close to the Georgians. They have thesame appearance, and even their last names sound similar. Major dierencesare preserved in folklore, ethics, rites, and customs. In 1921, after Georgiawas occupied by the Red Army, Abkhazia was declared independent for ashort time; however, later, during the Soviet gerrymandering, Georgian bor-ders encompassed Abkhazia. Abkhazia is located along the Georgian borderwith Russia, and its economy is mostly agricultural, as it produces tobacco,tea, silk, and fruits. During the Soviet era, tourism was Abkhazias major in-dustry because of a high concentration of resorts along the Abkhazian BlackSea coast. Despite the fact that Abkhazia was the largest autonomous regionin Georgia, the ethnic Abkhazians constituted only 2 percent of the entire na-tions population, and within Abkhazia 44 percent of population was Geor-gian; 18 percent, Abkhazian; and 16 percent, Russian.In order to simplify control over the nationalities, ethnic groups, and future

republics within the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, whose rst job in the rstBolshevik government was to monitor and facilitate interethnic relations, ad-vocated the split of established ethnic groups and their division along the stateborders. That happened with the Ossetian people, for whom two separate au-tonomous republics, North Ossetia in Russia and South Ossetia in Georgia,


were created. Ossetians are an ethnic Iranian group that became Christian inthe early Middle Ages under Georgian and Byzantine inuence. A consoli-dated Ossetian kingdom was created in the eighth century, but in the thir-teenth century, having been driven out by invading Mongols, they arrivedfrom the north to the area where they reside now. Today many all-Georgianvillages exist in Ossetia, and the Ossetian population is mainly concentratedin the towns of Tskhinvali and Java. Before the recent conicts, two-thirds ofthe regions population was Ossetian and one-third Georgian.In the 1990s, three large-scale conicts emerged in the region following

the reevaluation of neighborly relations by nations striving for independence.These were wars between Armenia and Azerbaijan, between Georgia and Abk-hazia, and between Georgia and South Ossetia. These conicts resulted ingrowing violence among the nations, which are extending their demands forland and natural resources. Smaller ethnic groups requested freedom and inde-pendence for them.Most of the time these conicts were provoked by borders,which were set by the Bolshevik regime with the purpose of preserving the re-gions economic integrity without taking into account ethnic boundaries. Theborder problems between the states are still not resolved and borders remainundelimited. The chairman of the Border Guard Department of Georgia re-cently commented, We have an administrative border, but we still do notknow where the state border runs.14Among other major ethnic groups who have long history of living in the

Caucasus are Assyrians, Greeks, Meskhetian Turks, and Germans. The rstAssyrian community was established in Georgia during the reign of KingIrakli II, who secretly corresponded with the patriarch of the Assyrian churchAvraam, aiming to collect forces against the Ottoman Empire. The resettle-ment of Assyrians continued when Georgia became a part of the RussianEmpire. By the 1890s, there were about 5,000 Assyrians in Tbilisi. To avoidpersecutions by the Ottoman Empire, Assyrians moved in large numbers toGeorgia and Armenia during and after World War I. In 1947, the Soviet au-thorities deported thousands of Assyrians to Siberia and Kazakhstan. Onlysome of them were able to return to Georgia when the ethnic group was re-habilitated in 1954. According to the 2002 census, the number of Assyriansdropped to 3,299, which is 0.1 percent of Georgias population. Today, Assyr-ians live in two compact groups in Tbilisi and some other towns and in severalvillages in Armenia. Because of social and economic problems, the Assyrianswho traditionally engaged in trade and handicrafts are leaving the region inlarge numbers, emigrating to Russia and Western Europe.Although the rst Greeks came to western Georgia in the eighth and sev-

enth centuries b.c., the ancestors of the contemporary Greek population ar-rived in Georgia from Asia Minor together with the Assyrians in the middle


of the eighteenth century, when King Irakli II invited about 800 families ofGreek artisans to work at the newly opened silver and copper plants. Follow-ing the Russo-Turkish War of 18281829, Tsar Nicholas I allowed Greeksfrom Turkey who were viewed as reliable Orthodox Christians to relocate toGeorgia. After the Sovietization of the region in the 1920s, Greeks startedto emigrate to their homeland.15 A very small Greek community remains inGeorgia now.These people suer from the continuing economic crisis and arein a disadvantaged position because they do not speak the ocial Georgianlanguage.The Meskhetian Turks, who are Sunni Muslims, come from Meskheti, a

mountainous, agricultural region of Georgia located along the border withTurkey. Their native language is Turkish, and by their specic traditional cul-ture, they are close to the Turks of Anatolia; however, some features in theirlifestyle and customs show their alliance with the people of the Caucasus,primarily the Georgians.16 During World War II, about 95,000 MeskhetianTurks were exiled from Georgia to Central Asia. It is believed that Stalinsreason for their deportation was that there was a need to clear a strate-gically located region on the Soviet-Turkish frontier of elements suspectedof pro-Turkish sympathies, so that Soviet military operations could be ex-tended into northeastern Turkey.17 Thousands died en route and thousandsmore in the harsh living conditions of exile. The Meskhetian Turks could notreturn to their homeland because it had been designated a border zone,o-limits to all outsiders by Soviet authorities. Special residency permits, un-available to Meskhetian Turks, were required to enter the region. Recently,they have attempted to return but were not welcomed by the Georgians, whoclaimed that the Meskhetians have lost their links to Georgia. In 2006, theU.S. government developed a program aimed to assist Meskhetian Turks inrelocating to the Philadelphia area.The Germans established their community of 7,000 individuals in Azer-

baijan in the rst decades of the nineteenth century, trying to escape the dis-astrous political and economic situation in Germany after the NapoleonicWars. Six German colonies were founded in Georgia too. They settled in andaround Tbilisi, and on public lands given to them for agricultural activities.There were eight German colonies in Azerbaijan in the towns of Ganja andKhanly. Before World War II, about 23,000 ethnic Germans resided in theSouth Caucasus. All of them were resettled and murdered in Siberia underStalins policies when Hitlers Germany attacked the Soviet Union.18While part of the Soviet federal system, these republics were subject to

the policy of nativizing: forming indigenous ethnic leadership through spe-cially developed programs of training, recruiting, and promoting for service inthe republics political, economic, and cultural administration of people who


belonged to the republics titular nationality, such as Armenians in Armenia,Georgians in Georgia, and Azerbaijanis in Azerbaijan. Ethnic administrativeelites, who were created in the middle of the twentieth century, remain inpower even today, preserving the overrepresentation of the major ethnic groupand limiting opportunities available to minorities.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The complex history of the region reects the areas geographic conditionsand the diversity of the population. Its location at the crossroads of southeast-ern Europe and western Asia inuenced the histories of the people forming thepresent-day republics of the South Caucasus. All three countries originated astrade routes between Europe and Asia, securing narrow land passage for thosewho traveled between the Black and Caspian seas. People from the MiddleEast, Mediterranean, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia met and communi-cated in the Caucasus Mountains. The nice climate, rich soil, and abundantnatural resources attracted traders and invaders. Local people adopted a lotfrom theGreeks, Romans, Arabs, Turks, Persians, and Russians, but no one in-uence became dominant. Each nation was able to preserve its own ethnic tra-ditions and specics and use them as a background for further development.Cimmerian and Scythian cavalry, troops of Alexander, marched over the

area. Iran, Byzantium, and Turkey always wanted to establish control over theCaucasus. Arab and Mongol invaders, troops of Genghis Khan and Tamer-lane were here and took their booty. However, the history of Caucasus doesnot consist exclusively of wars. Despite the fact that the rulers were constantlyghting against one another, ordinary people wanted to coexist peacefully.Intensive commercial and cultural relations existed among neighboringcountries.Obsidian and int stone tools can be traced to the lower Paleolithic period.

Early farming society became involved in hunting in the sixth millenniumb.c. The rst permanent dwellings with stone foundations are attributed tothis time period. Later, bricks were used to construct the walls of the houses,and men were involved in pottery and metalworks.The Iron Age started thereat the end of the second millennium b.c. According to a Georgian versionof local history, iron was rst invented by the ancestors of modern Georgianpeople, whomigrated to the area at the southeast corner of the Black Sea.Theysupplied the Mittani kingdom and ancient Egypt with iron; the Abkhaziansclaim their authorship to the invention of iron, although 1,000 years later.

Early Societies

First tribal unions were established in the southern Caucasus at the end ofthe Bronze Age, when the need to defend the lands from Assyrian incursions,


known since the thirteenth century b.c., became a necessity. The number oftribes involved varied between forty and sixty, but eight of them were thelargest and strongest with the Uruatri tribe at the head. Later, in the ninth cen-tury b.c., this union was transformed into a centralized state named Urartu,which existed for several centuries.The rst known tsars of Urartu were Aramu(860846? b.c.), Sarduri (mentioned in 834 b.c.), and his son and grandson,Menua and Ishpuin. The dynasty of Sarduris successors ruled until 590 b.c..Dozens of tribes and other statelike formations were included in this strongmonarchy, which competed with Assyria, the mightiest state of the ancientOrient.The largest part of the future ethnic territory of Armenians was withinthe Urartu borders.Urartu was an economically prosperous state. Irrigation systems based on

channels and water reservoirs built by the slaves supported the agriculture inriver valleys. Mountainous pastures were used for seminomadic cattle breed-ing. Breeding of horses and camels needed for the tsars troops also developedhere.The craftsmen had ne skills working with bronze, iron, precious stones,clay, and wood. A temple complex Tesheiba, which served as the residentialand administrative center of the ruler, and was discovered near the present-daycity of Yerevan, is an example of the city culture at that time. The brick-stonepalace consisted of 120 rooms with huge reservoirs for grain and wine, ar-mories, clothes, and china. Inhabitants of the city did not conduct their owneconomic activities and received everything they needed from the treasury.The city was destroyed by an enemy incursion accompanied by re and plun-dering. The excavation of a large number of Scythian arrowheads allows oneto conclude that the history of the city ended in the sixth century b.c. underattacks of the northern nomads. Many treasures belonged to the temples andclergy. In 714 b.c., while ravaging the Urartian city of Musasir, the Assyrianstook from a local temple six golden shields decorated with dog heads, twelvesilver shields adorned with heads of lions and dragons, and many bronze stat-ues of local gods. The trophies also included a military arsenal, 1,000 poundsof silver, and about 200,000 pounds of copper. Local people worshipped woodas a symbol of life, and they expressed their knowledge in cuneiform.They hadtheir own system of measurements and digits, which under the Persian inu-ence was based on the two-thirds of a hundred unit favored by the Persians.The Armenian kingdom, which replaced Urartu in the sixth century b.c., be-came the rst real Armenian state, and was very soon thereafter included inthe Achaemenid empire, where it remained a separate province until the in-cursion of Alexander the Greats troops in the fourth century b.c. During thisperiod, the current Armenian nation was formed.At the beginning of the rst millennium b.c., independent proto-states

were created in the Caucasus. The genesis of ethnicities has not been stud-ied very well. The Armenian nation was formed approximately between the


fth and second centuries b.c. within the framework of the Armina Supriastate formation. The ancestors of Georgians formed somewhere around thistime two related cultures of the Colchis and the Kartli, which were later con-solidated into one nation. In the territory of present-day Azerbaijan, thereexisted the state named Caucasus Albania. Historical evidence conrms theexistence of close economic and political ties between the Caucasus and theHellenistic world. Ancient Greek myths brought to us the story of Jason, whotogether with his Argonauts had sailed to the eastern end of the Black Sea to re-trieve a golden eece from the Colchis, todays Georgia. According to anothermyth, angry Zeus ordered Prometheus to be chained to the cli of the highestCaucasian mount for stealing re. This myth is likely based in reality, becausethe Caucasus was an area of early metal production, where torches of naturalgas were burning that came to the surface from underneath the ground.The Colchis was governed by an independent ruler and comprised many

large towns with well-developed crafts. This level of development restrictedGreek colonization and prevented the Greeks from inuencing the local econ-omy and the social environment. Georgian historians insist that Georgianstatehood grew directly out of the kingdom of Colchis, which survived anddeveloped independently on the same territory from the twelfth century b.c.until the sixth century a.d., and was not subjugated by anybody, includingUrartu, Assyria, Media, or Persia.The ancient Georgian state formations, Colchis between the sixth and

fourth centuries b.c. on the eastern shore of the Black Sea and the Kartli king-dom between the fourth and third centuries b.c., in the mountains of easternGeorgia were constantly defending their integrity and national independence.Persia, Rome, and then Byzantium attacked this territory and divided it intosmall parts. Archeological excavations show that these states were rich, and thecoins found in large quantities prove that city life and trade were highly devel-oped there. Colchis, a far corner of the ancient world, reached the peak of itsdevelopment around the second century b.c. Colchis was famous for its goldand precious metals. While other nations were surviving in the Bronze Age,local people in Colchis were fusing iron. Gold was used for household andornamental purposes. Robes were decorated by ornaments sewn with goldenthreads, and drinking vessels were melted from gold or silver. Drinking vesselswere of special importance here because wine was invented in this land andwidely consumed.Knowledge about Colchis comes from several dozens of graves excavated

in the vicinity of the ancient city of Vani in the western part of modern-dayGeorgia. The rst archeological discoveries in the territory of this ancient city,which is covered by vineyards now, were made in 1975. It appears that Vaniwas the central city of the state until it was destroyed around 50 b.c., when the


A Colchis golden goblet (second century b.c.). Photographby Badri Vadachkoria provided by the Embassy of Georgia tothe United States.

province turned under full Greek inuence. Excavations show that the peopleof Colchis used goods imported from neighboring Greece and Persia. Amongthe things produced domestically were necklaces made of small golden beadscast as tortoises, birds, crouching gazelles, or rams heads. Golden plaqueswith pictures of eagles, ducks, and Sphinxes were attached to the clothes. As aresult of the excavations, objects such as massive silver belts depicting banquetscenes and golden diadems with engraved scenes of lions killing boars andbulls were discovered. Statuettes and other decorative objects reect Greekelegance. According to Strabo, the Georgian population was divided into fourgroupselite with the tsar at the top and consisting of clergy, knights, andlandlords, and slaves.19

Medieval States

Armenia became a developed and prosperous sate under King Tigranes IIthe Great (9556 b.c.) when its territory included lands between the Caspianand Mediterranean seas. The state was based on agricultural communities, a


strong army of many slaves and war prisoners, and a city population activein metallurgy, the main industry of the time. High cultural achievements areattributed to this time also. Under a strong Hellenistic inuence, theater andarchitecture were established, and folklore epics described the ght of Arme-nian people against foreign invaders. The court poets gloried Tigraness ruleas twenty-ve years of nonstop successes. However, because of the lack ofeconomic integration, the Armenian state was weak and the Roman Empireoccupied it. Contemporary information about other people of the Caucasuswas provided by Strabo in the rst century a.d. He provided a thorough ac-count of life in Iberia (then Georgia), which according to him was full oflarge cities and settlements. Also, he gave a description of people who livedin northern Azerbaijan, a territory known then as Albania. Strabo stated thatfarming, cattle breeding, and wine production were the main economies ofthe Caucasus Albans, who were divided into twenty-six tribes united underthe power of one tsar.A series of slave uprisings in Armenia and parts of Georgia in the rst and

second centuries a.d. proved the ineciency of slavery. At the same time, landownership was established. Fertile lands of the Transcaucasus were always thesubject of attacks from neighboring Iran and Turkey. The Arshakid dynasty,which ruled Armenia until 428, was supported by the Byzantine Empire.Thisunion was conrmed by the acceptance of Christianity in Armenia in 301,contrary to the Zoroastrianism professed in Iran. With this act, Armenia be-came the rst nation in the world that elevated Christianity to the level of astate religion. Although the ocial date of the acceptance of Christianity asits state religion is a.d. 301, the actual date may be as late as a.d. 314. Ar-menians claim that Tiridates III (a.d. 238314) was the ruler who ociallyChristianized his people.Tsar Arshak II (350367) tried to strengthen his power and built a large

city of Arshakovan, where all fugitive slaves and peasants received rights of freemen. Immediately, the valley around the city was full of people who served inthe tsars 90,000-strong army. This endangered the aristocracy, which askedIran for assistance, and all men and women of Arshakovan were murdered bythe Iranians. Arshaks successor, Pap (369374), continued the policy of stateexpansion, ghting for more independence for the Armenian church fromByzantium, but the ongoing secularization of church possessions aggravatedrelations between him and the clerics who killed the tsar. In 391, the ByzantineEmpire occupied Armenia, and the institute of tsars was eliminated; landsunder Iranian control were incorporated into Iran in 428, when the Arascidmonarchy of Iranian origin was abolished. Since then, no single ruler has evercontrolled the entire country, which at that time had a territory ve timesgreater than the territory of the present-day republic.


The western part of the Caucasus was populated by the Georgians. Iberiaand Kartli were the most advanced areas with established feudal relations andland ownership by aristocracy. The clan of the Bagratids, who were to ruleGeorgia for the next thousand years, was established in the third century.For purposes of prestige, they proclaimed the dynastys descent from Davidand Solomon of Israel, although they originated in the territory of northernTurkey. In 331, KingMirian accepted Christianity and proselytized among hissubjects. The rst written documents originated around this time. The intro-duction of Christianity in Georgia inuenced the development of philosophyand theological studies. Developed schools of rhetoric existed in Georgia inthe fourth century, and the rst census was conducted in the seventh cen-tury. Temples built at that time still serve as examples for modern Georgianarchitecture. Under the inuence of Christian Armenia and Georgia, a scriptappears in the lands along the Caspian Sea inhabited by the so-called Albans,who were under the control of the Iranian ruling dynasty of Sasanids. Whenthe Byzantine Empire established its control over this territory, Antropatena,an Azerbaijani proto-state was created.

Foreign Invasions

In the sixth and seventh centuries, the territory of the present-day Cau-casian republics was divided between Byzantium and Iran with a larger partrecognized as one of the provinces of Sasanid Iran. Persian rule was character-ized by increased taxation and the introduction of monetary taxes. Zoroastri-anism was the dominant religion of that time and King Khosrov I introducedit forcefully. In 571, the Caucasian people revolted against religious discrimi-nation, and Byzantium took them under its protection.The war ended in 591with the defeat of the Iranians; the lands were returned to Emperor Mauritius(582602), who ruled through the appointment of military governors. Thegovernors transferred land from one state to another as a trophy in ongoingwars between them.Like everywhere during feudal times, religious institutions performed po-

litical, legal, and cultural functions. Because the countries of the Caucasuswere not politically independent, the church was the only institution that at-tempted to unify the people and represent all ethnicities residing in the region.Christianity was the common religion for all people of the region. Slavery didnot play a signicant role in Caucasian society. Feudal relations were based onrelations between a landlord and the vassal agricultural community.After creating the caliphate with its center in Baghdad in spring 654, and

after the mountain paths became open, Arabs moved into the area of thesouthern Caucasus, expanding Islam by force. The Arabs did not stay in theCaucasus permanently but made rapid attacks, looting villages and taking


prisoners. Since the middle of the seventh century, all of the people of theCaucasus defended their lands from the Arab attacks and had no protectionfrom Byzantium. They united under Theodoros Rshtuni, who signed a treatywith the Arabs, creating a dependent state with the right to have its own armywith up to 15,000 knights and not paying duties to the Arabs. Because of arelative balance between the Arabs and Byzantium, the Caucasian countriespreserved their independence. The entire period of the Arab occupation wasan endless cycle of revolts, defeats, and expulsions of occupants. The strongestwas the uprising in Azerbaijan, which started in 816 and lasted for more thantwenty years. While under Arab rule, the lands of the Caucasus were ruled bya caliphs representative, who appointed local rulers for Albania, Armenia, andeastern Georgia. The previously popular belief that the invasion of Arabs hadsome positive consequences, because Islam brought some elements of cultureto the region, has been discarded by scholars. It appears that before the Araboccupation, the cultural development of the region was much higher than inthe areas where the Arabs resided. Future achievements of the so-called Mus-lim culture were based on accepting the culture of Caucasian and CentralAsian peoples.20During the following centuries, Armenia was from time to time divided be-

tween Iran and Byzantium. Much damage was inicted by the occupation ofSeljuk Turks in the eleventh century. This ght against oppressors is describedin the great Armenian epic of David of Sassoon. During these years, the force-ful resettlement of the Armenians was so intensive that in eleventh century, theArmenian kingdomwas established on the periphery of the Byzantine Empire.Armenian villages existed in the territory between Egypt and Crimea, and be-tween India and the Balkans. Armenians were rst known as city dwellers andcraftsmen, but later, especially after the Mongols ravaged the country in thethirteenth century, Armenians became involved in agriculture.

The Golden Age of Georgia

The Seljuk Turks who invaded Byzantium in the eleventh century devas-tated western Georgia. However, King David IV, also known as David theBuilder (10891125), who united separate Georgian states into one kingdom,overcame the crisis. Smart, educated, and having a strong will, he became oneof the best military and political leaders in Georgian history. King David IVgathered the population in valleys of eastern Georgia, concentrated all gov-ernment power in his hands, and created a new 45,000-man army, whichconsisted of resettled nomads from the north who received land plots in ex-change for their service. David stopped paying contributions to the Turks andsecured Georgias independence. Additionally, he made some territorial acqui-sitions, adding a part of Armenia to Georgia. By the middle of the eleventhcentury, all small medieval Armenian kingdoms were incorporated into the


Byzantine Empire, and then lost to Seljuk Turks after the battle at Manazkertin 1071. After that, Ani, the old Armenian capital, was ruled by Muslim dy-nasties. In 1123, Georgias King David IV recovered Ani for the Christians,but lost it three years later.Davids successes were multiplied by his grandsonGeorge III (11561184),

who elevated his daughter Tamar (11841207) to the throne because he didnot have a son. The international political situation was in Tamars favor. Be-cause Constantinople had been captured by crusaders, Tamar was able to getrid of the Turks control and acquire large parts of Armenia and Azerbaijan,which had been devastated by Turkish occupants. Expanding Georgian powerinto Armenia, Queen Tamar (11841212) extended Georgias control as farwest as the Caspian shores and as far south as the Aras River. At that time,the countrys population was more than 5 million. After northern Armeniaand Azerbaijan were included in Georgia, small principalities, mostly underKurdish rulers, were established in dierent parts of the region. The monarchruled by divine right, though the existence of feudal institutions prevented theroyal power from becoming a despot. During Queen Tamars reign, there wasa movement, although unsuccessful, to limit the royal prerogative and estab-lish a legislative body with authority equal to that of the ruler. Under Tamar,hospitals opened and two academies were established. Newly built bridges,roads, and inns for traders contributed to the development of trade and inter-national relations. This period of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is rec-ognized as the golden age of Georgian culture; the age of creation of literary,architectural, and artistic monuments, which are still the source of inspirationfor contemporary Georgian artistic thought.

Late Feudal States

Since the middle of the thirteenth century, the people of the Caucasusfound themselves under the hardships of the Mongol yoke. Only Georgia andnorthern Armenia, controlled by Georgia, remained unoccupied, althoughthey were forced to provide up to one-fth of the entire male populationto the Mongol army. The Mongol occupation brought real devastation to theCaucasian lands. In the fteenth century, KhanTimur (or Tamerlane) invadedGeorgia seven times. During the 1403 attacks, his troops destroyed more than700 villages, fortresses, monasteries, and towns, and threw about 7,000 peo-ple down a cli in the Armenian city of Van. The attackers took skilled crafts-men into imprisonment, and traders tried to stay away from these risky ar-eas. Terror and impoverishment forced people to run away from their homes.Armenian settlements were established in Ukraine, Crimea, and India. Formany centuries, these countries could not restore the level of their economicdevelopment that had existed before the Mongols. The culture of the regionwas damaged signicantly too, because the most valuable written texts and


monuments of art and architecture were destroyed. Only a few monasteriescontinued to rewrite the rescued books, while the national culture, especiallyArmenian culture, was developed abroad.In the sixteenth century, Iranian shahs established a small statelike forma-

tion based on the union of dierent Azerbaijani clans and family groups andimposed the Shia version of Islam on the population. A growing Muslim reli-gion and the division of lands between Iran and Turkey had the most negativeimpact on Armenia. The non-Muslim population was cruelly exploited, mur-dered, or sold on slave markets all over Asia. In 1578, for example, 60,000Armenians were pushed into exile. Because of similar pressures by Muslims,Georgia developed better connections with Russia. The rst requests for Rus-sian assistance were sent from Georgia by the Kakhetian King Levan to theRussian tsar Ivan the Terrible. Georgian loyalty to Russia was formally ex-pressed in 1587 by King Alexander.Tragic events continued in the Caucasus during the seventeenth century

also. The development of international trade, which was concentrated in thehands of the Armenians, led to the growth and enrichment of cities, but in1604, the Iranian shah Abbas I exiled 350,000 Armenians and increased taxes.A series of brutally suppressed uprisings continued until 1633. The same pol-icy was conducted in Georgia, where Shah Abbas I wanted to exterminatethe entire native population and use the freed lands for the resettlement ofTurkish tribes. Contemporary chronicles reported that a Georgian peasantworked the plow with one hand and clenched a rie with another, afraid ofbeing killed or taken into captivity. Up to 12,000 Georgians were capturedand kidnapped into Turkish or other Middle Eastern slavery annually. About300,000 Georgians were resettled to Iran when Shah Abbas wanted to trans-form Georgia into a Persian province. In 1634, the Kakhetian King Teymu-raz initiated a campaign aimed to unite two separate parts of Georgia, Kartliand Kakheti. Some economic developments occurred in the cities during the1640s, when the role of Tbilisi increased. Georgian traders used the time ofpeace to reestablish their connections with Europe and the Near East. Turkishand Persian occupation of Armenia continued in the seventeenth century.In the rst quarter of the eighteenth century, when the Safavid monarchy

in Iran collapsed, Georgian kings attempted to strengthen their union withRussia in order to use Russian force against Iran and to make their countryfree. King Vakhtang VI supported the Russian tsar Peter the Great in his waragainst Persia, but Russia did not have enough power to protect Georgia, andKing Vakhtang had to nd refuge in Russia. Georgians who emigrated to-gether with him founded a separate Georgian colony in Moscow, which isremembered through the naming of Moscows streets with Georgian names.Several famous Georgian and Russian scholars, politicians, and military


commanders were born into this colony. After that, eastern Georgia was underTurkish rule, and was then transferred to Iranian control until 1747, when itbecame independent after the death of Nadir Shah.In 1762, Erekle II (17201798) acceded to the throne and united Geor-

gia.The rst European power that recognized newly independent Georgia wasFrance, which hoped to turn Erekle against Russia and use his help in con-trolling Persia.21 As an independent king, Erekle exchanged letters with theemperor of Austria, promising to attack Turkey in Asia if subsidized. Indepen-dence contributed to the economic development of the country, where freetrade and guild activities were permitted. Glass and cannon factories were im-mediately established in Tbilisi, the coinage of domestic money was restored,and the city population increased rapidly. Georgias strength helped lead tothe KuchukKarnaiji peace treaty in 1783, under which Turkey removed allof its military garrisons from Georgian territory and agreed not to request anypayments. However, this did not mean that Turkey had no aggressive plans inregard to Georgia any more. In order to prevent further Turkish aggression,Erekle II initiated the conclusion of the Georgievsky treaty, which denedthe status of Georgia as a Russian protectorate. The Georgian king recognizedhimself as a Russian subject, and Russia in exchange accepted the obligationto defend Georgia from foreign aggressions.

Within the Russian Empire

Wars in Georgia aected the people in Azerbaijan and Armenia during theentire eighteenth century. Using the relative weakness of Iran, Turkey invadedArmenia in 1722, and about 30,000 people were murdered during the siegeof Yerevan. Betw

peter l. roudik-culture and customs of the caucasus (culture and customs of europe)-greenwood (2008)

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